Anissa Kherrati, Chair of CSC’s Regional Ethnocultural Advisory Committee in Quebec

Hello, my name is Anissa Kherrati, and I am Chair of the Quebec Region’s Regional Ethnocultural Advisory Committee. So I have been a volunteer with Correctional Service of Canada for almost 14 years now. So for me, it’s important to be able to give back to the community because I believe in reintegration—I believe in second chances.

So my story began quite simply: I was a soloist in a choir and my friend, who was the choir director, invited me by telling me, “Anissa, come, we’re going to Drummondville, we’re going to celebrate Christmas with the inmates.” So I said to myself, “Well, I’m going, that’s important.” I started to sing, it was an Ave Maria, we were singing Christmas songs, classic Christmas songs, and there were young men in front of me, slightly older men who started to cry (...) When I started singing, it was from that moment that I said, “I can make a difference, I can bring something else.” So I started to offer business start-up workshops in penitentiaries, giving two-hour workshops to inmates to explain how to start a business.

The time that I give, when I volunteer, is time that can make an impact on someone’s life. Like when I go singing and I have people come to me and say, “You made me feel, you made me feel human. Thank you, thank you for being here, thank you for transporting me outside these walls.” And so, that was my story with CSC (Correctional Service of Canada).

Thus, the Ethnocultural Advisory Committee was the next logical step: volunteering to make a difference. It’s a committee that is part of Correctional Service of Canada and is made up of volunteers who care about ethnoculturalism. We help CSC, we provide tools, we help CSC to better understand ethnocultural realities.

We work on various projects, with specific areas of focus assigned directly by the Commissioner. Mental health is one of them, but we also work on reintegration, employability and everything related to housing. We’ve also added the issues of discrimination and racism.

We listen to our ethnocultural inmates, we relay this information to Correctional Service of Canada, who listens to us, and together we work towards continuous improvement so that we can better meet the needs of this population.

My two priorities are to continue to raise awareness of ethnocultural differences and to work, to strengthen our work in mental health.

Yes, there is still work to be done. Yes, as a big institution, we take things one step at a time, but in the last 14 years I have seen a lot of progress, I have seen an openness, I have seen a lot of things happen, which means that, well, if I have another 10 years, 14 years to give, I’m going to give it all.

For me, it’s important to view inmates as humans, people I don’t judge, and who are entitled to a second chance because they will one day be citizens in their own right.